Main Junction: REMAKE/REMODEL - The Dancing World Of Lorna Drake (Closes 4th December)

The REMAKE/REMODEL meme is one of my favourite things. Artists need a place to show off and Whitechapel should always be It. A handful of entries will be showcased on Bleedingcool at the end of each challenge.

THE RULES:

This is for ART ONLY. Any pen-portraits, or crappy scribbles padded-out with words, will cause a deployment of the newly-trained Urethral Attack Maggots. And a banned account.

No stock-photo manipulation. No half-arsed bollocks. Anything deemed to be piss-takery will be nuked from orbit. Original photography is fine.

No more than ONE submission by any one person.

INSTRUCTIONS:

LORNA DRAKE

Let's womble far beyond our comfort zone with a challenge from Way Out There. And let’s nibble at the toes of context before we get down to business:

Bunty was a British comics anthology for girls published by D. C. Thomson & Co. from 1958 to 2001. It consisted of a collection of many small strips, typically the stories themselves being three to five pages long… In contrast to earlier and contemporary comics, it was aimed primarily at working class girls under the age of 14, and contained mostly fictional stories.

To me, the decline of Bunty (and similar titles of its era) makes for an odd, slightly sad little history. Ludicrously popular in its day – with its monomaniacal devotion to stories based around “girls’ interests” (which is to say: ponies, gossiping about boys, dressing up, makeup, cooking, etc) – I imagine it watching bemusedly from its point on the banks of the River Of Changing Values, obstinately refusing to go with the flow, before being startled by the bear of Cultural Anachronism and drowning amongst the gambolling salmon of Irrelevance.

Which is a bit of a shame frankly, because some of the stories – had they moved a little more flexibly with the times – couldashouldawoulda developed into Tasty Treats. Take our tiptoe hobbling heroine du jour, Miss Lorna Drake:

Lorna Drake, a ballet dancer, attended the Thelma Mayne Dancing School. Thelma was a ballerina herself before an accident prevented her from dancing ever again. This accident was caused by Lorna's father, also a ballet dancer, who was going blind when he let Thelma Mayne fall during a performance, thus crippling her…

All Of Human Drama is writ here, artchums. Ambitious young woman, stymied by the jealousy and bitterness of a corrupted mentor, must endure a lifelong penance in payment for the sins of her wretched parent.

Um. And also to solve crimes and stuff. And probably wear a lot of leotards.

This isn’t the sort of thing we’re used to doing in these parts, right? Not a whiff of lasers, magic-explodo or spandex sexpestery. So here is instructive clarification:

Pretend Bunty did everything in its power to move with the zeitgeist. Female empowerment, civil rights, contraception, social pressures, yadda yadda yadda. The rolling nebulae of contemporary she-youth interest was chased-down every step of the way.

And now here we are in 2011 – the Actual Fucking Future, yes? – and it’s time to launch a new strip in the pages of Bunty about a girl called Lorna Drake, scion of a troubled ballet clan, revolving loosely around the concept of Dance.

I'm finally able to slip in some Whitechapel time again and there's no lasers, magic-explodo or spandex sexpestery? This is going to be a lot of fun, my head has gone straight back to gender studies classes in art school. Good times.

YAHOOOOO! A challenge that uses something from British girls's comics! Did somebody take up my suggestion for such a challenge? If they did, I'm really pleased!

I've been part of the research into why girls' comics died and the campaign to bring them back. If a new title does come, I hope to be a writer for it.

Well, this challenge sounds right up my alley. Hmm, how shall I bring Bunty and Lorna Drake out of the 'Slough of Despond' (failure of the industry to empathise with readers and writers) as Pat Mills, the big name in British comics, puts it? He did it with Tammy, which went for darkness and grittiness. The early Tammy was full of dark, cruel serials, the most notorious of which was "The Slave of War Orphan Farm". Then there was Misty, which went for goth, horror and the supernatural - and became another remake/remodel around here somewhere. The new trends led to huge sales and a whole new revolution in boys' comics with 2000AD and Battle - but they eventually faded, and the industry slid into what Daddy SI describes above.

There is just one thing I ask: all artists please, please, give the ballet justice! If there is one thing I could never stand in British girls' comics, it was badly-drawn ballet. Some of the ballet was drawn badly because their artists did not draw ballet positions correctly, or their artistic style was not right for ballet, or both.

Of course, there were artists who could draw absolutely fabulous ballet in girls' comics, the best of which (in my opinion) was John Armstrong. If you look at how Armstrong could draw gymnastics, you will see why. It beats me why I saw Armstrong draw only one ballet story, "Jill's Only Joy" from Tammy. He should have been drawing far more ballet stories than that, he was just the artist for it.

I actually consider this one outside of my wheelhouse. Should be interesting. I'm getting a circus/aerial performance art vibe and that gives me an excuse to throw in a clown love interest. Idea cemented.

I'm going to put this up as a placeholder in case I don't finish my proper idea. It's really just a re-costumed, repainted, facied-up sketch I did a while ago while watching Body Remix-Goldberg Variations, via (I think) Vornaskotti.